Kim Dotcom: 'ultimate file hosting solution' to be launched

Auckland
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While still fighting extradition to the US on copyright violation charges, Dotcom, founder of the notorious Megaupload, has announced the upcoming launch of "Mega", a new and improved, raid-proof file sharing service.

The new service is planned to be launched on the one-year anniversary of Megaupload’s shutdown by the United States Department of Justice, on January 19, 2013.

38-year-old Dotcom, formerly Kim Schmitz, currently resides in New Zealand. The US government has been attempting to extradite him since the raid on his premises at the beginning of this year. His previous project, Megaupload, regularly attracted 50 million users per day and enjoyed support from many major figures in the American music industry, and 15,600 US military members held accounts with the website.

Digital Journal reported recently that Dotcom’s extradition hearing has been pushed back until March 2013, when a court will decide whether he is to be extradited to the U.S. to face various charges, including copyright infringement and money laundering.

In the meantime, Dotcom has not been "resting on his laurels", so to speak, but has produced a brand new product. He announced via Twitter that the new service, Mega, will have security, bolstered by a so-called “doomsday launch button” which could cause Mega to self-destruct in the event of a raid.

On his Twitter account is the following tweet:

Kim Dotcom

According to Wired, Mega will be encrypted with a key that Mega itself will not have access to, but it will give users and third-party application developers control of access to files on the service.

Dotcom told Wired in a recent interview, “If servers are lost, if the government comes into a data center and rapes it, if someone hacks the server or steals it, it would give him nothing,” Dotcom explains. “Whatever is uploaded to the site, it is going to be remain closed and private without the key.”

Gizmodo reports that basically, the idea is that the law cannot go after Mega, as it has no idea what is stored on its servers. According to Dotcom, the only way this could be illegal is if the law makes encryption illegal.

Dotcom says that investors are already lined up to take part in the new venture, which he characterized as a “massive global network,” according to TorrentFreak. “All non-US hosters will be able to connect servers & bandwidth,” he said.

He hopes that the new service will extend beyond file-sharing, to include email, video applications and a host of other functions.

According to Dotcom, over 90% of the coding of Mega is now complete, and a team of lawyers, partners and investors are ready to launch the project. He wrote on Twitter that it took seven years of experience to tailor the "ultimate file hosting solution", and he compared the new service to a "poetry of logic."

Kim Dotcom

While the domain that will ultimately host the new Mega project has not yet been announced, it is unlikely to be a .com.